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Foreword to Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Between 1909 and 1914 T. E. Lawrence travelled and
worked in the Middle East. As a young Oxford-educated archaeologist who had
learned to speak Arabic, he seemed set for a career in archaeology, travel
and writing. Of these, writing was perhaps his strongest ambition.

Then, in August 1914, the Great War broke out. In late
October Turkey, the principal imperial power in the Middle East, took up
arms on the German side. To do so was a gamble which, if lost, would lead
inevitably to the break-up of the Turkish Empire. Those who now accuse
Britain and France of fragmenting the Muslim Middle East should remember
that it was Turkey's entry into the war that precipitated the downfall of
the Ottoman Empire.

In November 1914 Lawrence was posted to the Cairo
Intelligence Department. He arrived in mid-December and stayed throughout
1915 and much of 1916, working on maps and trying to interpret inadequate -
and often conflicting - reports of Turkish activity. During this period he
became the Cairo department's specialist on the Hejaz and Syria (which
included what is now Jordan). In this role he strongly advocated the benefits
of an Arab uprising.

At little cost to the Allies, a successful Arab revolt
would diminish or even remove the Turkish threat to the Suez Canal – the
first responsibility of the British force in Egypt. It would also re-open
Mecca to Muslim pilgrims from the British and French empires. A revolt would
reduce the resources Turkey could deploy on other fronts, and assist a
future British advance through Palestine. For Lawrence personally there was
another objective. France, Britain's ally in Europe, had long-standing
imperial ambitions in the Middle East. Lawrence, on the contrary, believed
that the Arabs could and should be allowed to govern themselves. A
successful revolt would leave Syria in the hands of an armed Arab
administration, claiming the right to self-government from a position of
strength.

After some protracted diplomacy Hussein, the Sherif of
Mecca, fired the first shot in the Arab Revolt on 10 June 1916. Initially,
things went well; but after seizing Mecca and the nearby Red Sea ports, the
uprising seemed to stall. The Turks were holding out in Medina, from where
they launched a counter-offensive. By autumn there was a growing risk that
they would recapture Mecca and crush the revolt.

The British in Cairo were sending money and supplies,
but knew little about what was really happening, or how best to help. In
late 1916 Lawrence went down to the Hejaz with instructions to find out more.

That is the point at which Book I of Seven Pillars –
the real story – begins. The Introductory Book that precedes it is not
essential to Lawrence's narrative (he omitted it from his popular
abridgement Revolt in the Desert). The nine introductory chapters do,
nevertheless, contain an interesting essay on the history of Arabia and
the character of its peoples, as Lawrence saw them.

The quality of Lawrence's reports from the Hejaz and
his evident ability to mix with the Arab leadership led first to a temporary,
and then a permanent, liaison role. From early 1917 he was attached to the
Arab force led by Emir Feisal, third son of the Sherif of Mecca.

He was not the only British officer who served in the
revolt but, as the campaigns developed, he spent more time than any of the
others with Bedouin irregulars in the field. He also covered a wider area,
often far behind enemy lines. The official British Military Mission tried to
channel Arab effort into conventional operations. Lawrence, by contrast,
encouraged the Bedouin to adapt their ancient raiding tactics.

The Hejaz Railway ran 800 miles from Damascus to
Medina. Much of the route was through desert, and therefore vulnerable to
raiding. It was the lifeline of the Medina garrison, and to defend it
against scattered guerrilla attacks the Turks had to divert men from other
fronts. Blowing up trains - especially locomotives, which could not be
replaced in wartime - would gradually cripple Turkish logistics.

Also, the Turkish telegraph wires ran alongside the
railway. By cutting them frequently the Arabs forced the Turks to send
military messages by radio. These were intercepted and deciphered by the
British - an immeasurable benefit to the Palestine campaign.

While drafting Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence fully
expected that other British liaison officers would write their memoirs of the
revolt. In the event, though, they published very little. Seven Pillars was
destined to be the only substantial account.

As Lawrence pointed out, Seven Pillars describes mainly
the events in which he was involved. Without additional material much of the
revolt went unrecorded, so there was historical imbalance.

It was not until the late 1960s, more than forty years
after Seven Pillars was written, that the British Government began opening
its First World War archives to researchers. It then became possible to see
Seven Pillars in a wider context and to check Lawrence's narrative against
contemporary records.

Before the papers were released, some biographers had
claimed that Seven Pillars was historically inaccurate, and that Lawrence
had greatly exaggerated his role. The documents showed that both suggestions
were wrong. Considering the length of the book, and the fact that Lawrence
had written much of it from memory, Seven Pillars is (as he forecast it
would be) remarkably consistent with reports written at the time.

Some literary critics have made similar suggestions.
More familiar with fiction than history, they assume that Lawrence invented
here and there to increase the drama. I have found no evidence of this,
though occasionally he used false names to disguise someone's identity.
There can be no doubt that he intended Seven Pillars to be a true story of
real events.

The archives show that Lawrence understated his
personal role, rather than exaggerating it. The military historian Basil
Liddell Hart reached a similar conclusion in the 1930s, after interviewing
other British officers who had served in the revolt. Lawrence had a purpose in
playing down his role, and also in failing to spell out the extent to which
the revolt depended on outside support. Yes, the elements of support are
mentioned, but nowhere in Seven Pillars is their contribution weighed
against the contribution of the Arabs. Without British (and some French)
funding, supplies, training, transport and military back-up the revolt would
have failed at an early stage.

A century later there is no reason to conceal these
benefits of military alliance. However, Lawrence was writing during the 1919
Peace Conference, where die-hard imperialists from France and the Government
of India joined forces to deny the Arabs the self- government they had
fought for. In Seven Pillars Lawrence spelled out the contribution and
sacrifice that underpinned the Arab claim to freedom. Those who say he was an
imperialist can know little about him. 'Do make clear,' he told a lecturer
in 1928, 'that my objects were to save England, and France too, from the
follies of the imperialists, who would have us, in 1920, repeat the exploits
of Clive or Rhodes. The world has passed by that point.'1 Whatever the
external support, the overwhelming majority of men and leaders who fought in
the revolt were Arabs. They, not their allies, are the heroes of Seven
Pillars.

Why, so long after the event, do Western and Arab
historians still disagree about Lawrence's role? I think one reason is the
manner in which he brought his influence to bear. We have included as an
appendix to this edition his essay 'Twenty-seven Articles', written in
mid-1917 to help British officers serving with the revolt. One of the key
principles he set out is that advice should be given only to the Arab
leaders, and in strict privacy. There was no place for Christian strangers
in the Arab chain of command. The fighting men must believe that their orders
came from Arabs. Lawrence practised what he preached. Memoirs by Arab
participants suggest they had little idea of his role. They thought the
British who accompanied their raids were useful, but mainly because they
were trained to handle explosives.

The reality of the situation was quite different.
Britain, which financed and supplied the revolt, was in an overwhelmingly
strong position to influence its conduct. In 1917 Feisal's Northern Army was
placed formally under Allenby's command. British influence was channelled
through Allenby's liaison officers. Wartime documents from early 1918 show
that in British eyes the liaison staff were, de facto, in control of the Arab
forces.2

Confusion also reigns about Lawrence's ambitions for
the Arabs. It is often claimed that he dreamed of a united Arabia. He did
not. 'I never, to my knowledge, suggested it . . . the physical difficulties
alone make it a plan too wild for me. Remember I have always been a realist
and opportunist in tactics: and Arab unity is a madman's notion - for this
century or next, probably. English-speaking unity is a fair parallel. I am
sure I never dreamed of uniting even Hejaz and Syria. My conception was of a
number of small states.'3

Other statements amplify this view, for example: 'When
people talk of Arab confederations or empires: they talk fantastically. It
will be generations, I expect - unless the vital tempo of the East is much
accelerated - before any two Arabic states join voluntarily. I agree their
only future hope is that they should join but it must be a natural
growing-together. Forced unions are pernicious: and politics, in such
things, should come after geography and economics. Communications and
trade must be improved before provinces can join.'4

The accuracy of Seven Pillars shows that Lawrence took
seriously his duty as historian. Yet in his description of the capture of
Damascus he let his standard fall: 'I was on thin ice when I wrote the
Damascus chapter and anyone who copies me will fall through it, if he is not
careful. S.P. is full of half-truth, here.'5

His account exaggerated the role of the Arabs in what
was really a joint operation by all the forces in Allenby's vanguard. Again,
in the context of the 1919 Peace Conference, Lawrence had reasons for this
distortion. The negotiations around the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement
of 1915 had produced a requirement that the Arabs must contribute to victory
before they could claim any degree of self-government in Syria. It would not
do for Lawrence to suggest that their presence in the final advance was
irrelevant. Moreover, doing so would belie the part they had played in
Allenby's success.

For the Arab cause the capture of Damascus, one of the
great historic centres of the Arab world, held deep symbolic value. On 25
September 1918 Allenby wrote to Feisal, 'There is no objection to Your
Highness entering Damascus as soon as you consider that you can do so with
safety.'6The following day
Allenby ordered his other forces to keep out of the city. Thus, special
instructions to the Australian Division on 29 September read: 'While
operating against the enemy about Damascus care will be taken to avoid
entering the town if possible . . . Unless forced to do so for tactical
reasons, no troops are to enter Damascus.'7 In other words, Allenby and his
advisers thought it right for the Arabs to take Damascus, just as the Allies
would give the Free French the honour of liberating Paris in 1944.

What actually happened was that the Turks pulled out of
Damascus, leaving various Arab elements vying to fill the power vacuum.
Doubtless many of the inhabitants feared that Feisal's advancing army would
plunder the city. Before his forces could enter, an Australian unit passed
through in pursuit of Turkish forces. It was warmly welcomed.

For Britain and for the Arabs, the capture of Damascus
was politically sensitive. In Seven Pillars Lawrence chose neither to stress
the role of the Australian Light Horse in the British advance, nor to
endorse Australian claims to have been 'first in'. His version of the entry
as an Arab triumph is consistent with Allenby's intention; but in the heat
of battle things hadn't quite gone to plan.

In relation to the war in Europe the Arab Revolt was,
as Lawrence said, a 'sideshow of a sideshow'. In relation to the history of
the Middle East it was probably much more than that, but its legacy is not
obvious.

Clearly, the post-war boundaries imposed by the Allies
were based on the Sykes–Picot map, drawn up in 1915 before the revolt began.
In the post-war negotiations, this imperial carve-up prevailed over the very
different boundaries that Lawrence proposed in November 1918.8 So what did
the Arab Revolt achieve, beyond short-lived independence for the Hejaz and,
in the longer term, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?

To address this, one needs to answer a different
question. If the revolt had not happened, or had been crushed in its early
stages, what would have been the balance of military strength in the Middle
East?

For the Turks, as things turned out, defending the
Hejaz railway, keeping it running and trying to contain the Arab Revolt
became large-scale military commitments. Without those distractions and the
attrition caused by Arab attacks, they could have put far more resource into
the defence of Palestine.

To defeat a far stronger Turkish defence, Britain would
have had to divert more men and materiel from the Western Front. Such a
decision would have been extremely unlikely. Then, with little prospect of
victory in the Middle East and the outcome in Europe uncertain, the on-going
secret negotiations for a separate peace with Turkey might have borne fruit.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement presupposed a clear-cut
Turkish defeat. Without that, the history of the Middle East would certainly
have been different.9

More generally, after the Arab Revolt a series of
concessions led, albeit slowly, to self-government and independence. During
the next hundred years such movements would transform the world.

Seven Pillars is more than a work of history. For
Lawrence, who had always hoped to become a writer, it was also an
opportunity. As he said to a friend, 'The story I have to tell is one of the
most splendid ever given a man for writing.'10 He had always dreamed of
writing a great book, and Seven Pillars might be a masterpiece. 'Do you
remember my telling you once that I collected a shelf of "Titanic" books . .
. and that they were the Karamazovs, Zarathustra and Moby Dick. Well, my
ambition was to make an English fourth. You will observe that modesty comes
out more in the performance than in the aim!'11

Other writers have discussed Seven Pillars as war
literature, as travel writing, as military theory and as autobiography. It
offers all these things and more. Long before David Lean's film Lawrence of
Arabia, it was a best-seller, translated into many languages.

I have written elsewhere12 about the relationship
between this 1922 'Oxford Text' and the abridgement Lawrence made for the
lavish subscription edition he issued in 1926. I will repeat only the
conclusion here:

The creative drive that inspired and shaped Seven
Pillars gave out in 1922. Its achievement was the Oxford Text. That was the
version which Bernard Shaw described in a letter to the Prime Minister as 'a
masterpiece, one of the few very best of its kind in the world'.13 Shaw had
tried repeatedly to persuade Lawrence to leave it alone: 'You have something
to say; and you say it as accurately and vividly as you can: and when you
have done that you do not go fooling with your statement with the notion
that if you do it over again five or six times you will do it five or six
times better.'14

It may be that the Oxford Text fell short of Lawrence's
ambition. Yet meddling with it in his spare time - while tired, depressed
and in a wholly different frame of mind - was never likely to improve it.
Until 1997, when the Oxford Text was published for the first time, few
readers could judge it against the subscribers' abridgement. Safe from
comparison, the abridgement became a world classic, enjoying huge success
for nearly seven decades. But is it much more than a literary curiosity?
Yes, many sentences were improved; but overall, the tightened prose seems to
hinder the narrative, not help it. The thousands of changes made to prettify
the typesetting of the subscribers' edition served no literary purpose - no
purpose at all when the text was re-set for later trade editions. In the
rush to end the task, Lawrence left out much that is of interest. A literary
scholar might choose to read both versions. But if you have time to read
only one, almost all the arguments point to the fuller text.

7. Special instructions issued by the General Staff, Australian Mounted
Division 29 September 1918, WO95/4371, quoted in Jeremy
Wilson, op. cit. p. 556.

8. See Lawrence's memorandum to the Cabinet,
Reconstruction of Arabia 4 November 1918, David Garnett, ed.,
op. cit. pp.
265–9. In 2006 a newly discovered map showing the proposed boundaries was
exhibited at the Imperial War Museum.

9. The preceding paragraphs summarise the conclusions of a
discussion on the T.E. Lawrence Studies List in December 2011, notably the
argument put forward by
James Brown.

The first edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The
Complete 1922 Text (Castle Hill Press, 1997) contains an editorial appendix.
It sets out in detail the basis for this 'best text', derived from
Lawrence's manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and from amendments
he made in his master copy of the 1922 Oxford Times proof printing.

Lawrence's punctuation in the Bodleian manuscript is
erratic and often inadequate. The Oxford Times proof was heavily
repunctuated by the typesetter, presumably in Oxford Times house style. For
publication we used the punctuation of the manuscript as a starting-point,
and revised it where necessary.

To avoid needless distraction, we have eliminated
inconsistencies in capitalisation and in the spellings of Arabic words.

We are particularly grateful to Richard Westwood, who
helped prepare the 1997 edition, to Michael Carey of the Seven Pillars of
Wisdom Trust, to the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and to the late
St. John Armitage for his comments on the Arabic names queried by Hazel Bell
during her work preparing the index. St. John Armitage, our daughter Emily
Charkin, Marcus Fletcher, Lawrie Hooley, Jonathan Mandelbaum, Peter
Metcalfe, and our sons Edward and Peter all read the book in proof.

We would also like to thank Sjaak Commandeur, Marcus
Fletcher, Tasumi Tuneo and Yagitani Ryoko for their suggestions for further
amendments in this edition, notably to the index.

The maps are reproduced by kind permission of the
National Library of Scotland.

The cover illustrations, from the 1926 subscribers'
edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, are:

T. E. Lawrence chronology

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British
Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven
Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset

﻿

This T. E. Lawrence Studies website is edited and maintained by
Jeremy Wilson. Its content draws on the research archive
formed through work on Lawrence of Arabia, The Authorised Biography
and the ongoing Castle Hill Press edition of T. E. Lawrence's writings. Expenses
maintaining the site are funded by Castle Hill Press. The site has no connection
with any other organisation.